This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

The Russian Platform has posted a two and a half hour documentaryhttp://youtu.be/ecEK6llcucA put together by Rossiya 24 from footage accumulated since before the start of the Putin presidency. With dozens of Putin collaborators carrying the narrative, it gives the lie to every US government attempt to paint the Russian President in its own image.

Accused of being an authoritarian (like Lee Kuan Yew, who turned the tiny island of Singapore into the country that is 11th internationally and first in Asia on the Human Development Index), at 48 he was asked to take over the presidency of the largest country in the world, which was on its knees. In the nine years since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, the people had become tired and angry, seeing it raped by oligarchs protected by the world’s financial institutions.

The Second Chechen war began when Putin was still Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin, and the documentary shows him on a hastily improvised flight into the war zone, over which his handlers anguished. His message to the Russian commanders on the ground surely raised eyebrows. Vodka glass held high, he told them that they would definitely drink to the fallen when the campaign was over. Then putting down the glass down without drinking, he announced: “Now it’s time to get to work.”

That was one of the many snapshots of Putin exercising authority, all equally balanced by evidence of his deep humanity. His interactions with ordinary people — whom he generally encounters when they are distressed — demonstrate the caring that is faked by smooth Western politicians.

While his enemies routinely refer to him as ‘living on a different planet’ (Angela Merkel) or being difficult to read, this visual history as well as excerpts from a long interview recorded for television with a prime time Russian journalist reveal a man who appears to wear his heart on his sleeve while knowing exactly where he wants to take his country: to a better place.

It’s clear from these takes that Putin’s authority emanates from his demonstrated competence starting at a young age. Not as tall as the average Russian, he stands in front of his taller pairs with quiet confidence. Nor is there the slightest hint of a Mussolini complex about him. Putin is the quintessential quiet man who, as one narrator remarked, wears his power like a cross, not a sword. Quiet but not dour, on more than one occasion he is seen improvising humorous remarks at the mike, even singing unpretentiously. He is also seen condemning those he refers to ironically as his international ‘partners’. His hopes for relations with the West do not get in the way of a clear-eyed recognition of its rejection, whose reasons he contests.

That Russians should have consistently given him an 80+ rating is easy to understand when we see him giving a judo lesson to a kid half his size. At first the boy fails to tumble him, but when he makes the move correctly, Putin allows himself to be taken down, gracefully, without the hype that would be forthcoming from a Western leader. He recognizes that his relations with the Russian people are in good part the result of having grown up in modest surroundings, while recognizing the ‘advantages’ of being born in a privileged environment.

Scarcely into his first year as President, the submarine Kursk suffered an explosion with over a hundred sailors on board. Announcing the decision not to raise it personally to their families, he displayed equal parts of pain and quiet determination to succeed in making them understand that it would be useless.

His tenacity, whether in learning to play the piano, or conquering English, was already apparent when as a teenager, he went to the headquarters of the formidable KGB to tell them he wanted to work for them. (They told him he needed a degree in law, which he got, telling his bosses on his first job that what they were planning to do would contravene a whole series of laws, both domestic and international.)

Were President-elect Trump to see to it that this film is shown on prime time television, the alternative press would have a much easier job of fighting the Neo-cons plan to carve Russia up into so many obedient vassals. It might even spark a revolution, giving the Beltway hacks something real to chew on.

Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

This blog aims to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.

Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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P.S. I encourage you to review the archive. You will find many posts from recent years still relevant today.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.